14 comments:

Jen
said...

And sadly, in my district, their plan is to do more A, more,more,more with more district supervision to make sure that you're not spending too much time talking (ie explicit teaching) or "working too hard" (that's what one teacher was told) and guarding against your cutting any time from the children's collaborative group inquiries wherein they all inquire of one another: Do you want to do this? Nope, you? Nope! Great, let's have another day of no learning and fall further behind!

Then we can fire all of those awful teachers who can't make poor (in the actual monetary sense), unprepared kids create all of math all on their own and hire new ones who will really do what we say. And we say more hands-on group learning with only a guide on the side.

Remember the post where they couldn't find anyone to defend the Common Core Standards? Nobody can defend the A,B,C, & D. steps above. If you look at the comments after Barry's article, it's clear that their arguments fall back on generalities and ad hominem attacks.

On another KTM thread, I talk about the very few explicit "fluency" requirements in the Common Core Standards. They don't even define what fluency means. The rest of the standards use fuzzy words that are so vague that almost anything could fit.

They talk about critical thinking and understanding, but it's almost as if their brains can't handle the critical details and implications of their pedagogy. I could do a better job defending their position. Unfortunately, they expect to get something for nothing - better understanding, engagement, and motivation with less homework and more time spent in class covering less material. They assume that "enough" skills will be mastered.

This is K-6. When kids get to high school (and in many 7th and 8th grades), the fuzziness disappears and you get a lot of direct instruction and traditional textbooks. It's a cosmic wall of fuzziness below 7th grade. They worry about real world problems, but they live in a very un-real pedagogical dreamworld. They don't want to ask parents what goes on at home. They will continue to believe that we parents just turn off the TV and demonstrate an interest in books and learning.

Oh, true enough, except that in our district they've solved a lot of the post 7th grade problems by introducing these same techniques into the upper grades.

It's harder, but they're working diligently at it, especially with a new evaluation system that basically ensures you can't get satisfactory ratings if there isn't small group student led discussions in every class period, etc. Math teachers probably resist the most. But the push for it is still there and the techniques are already well integrated into history/social studies classes and English (and especially the writing portions thereof) classes etc.

The one place where I see a need for small group PRACTICE is in language learning. Students do need to say things over and over in context and breaking into small groups does increase that practice time. Making it a daily requirement there wouldn't be as offensive to me.

However, even if the schools adopted good curricula, many of the kids with LD's would still need 1:1 or small-group tutoring. Using a good program is an important first step, but it doesn't get around the fact that in a heterogeneous class, the pace and challenge level is going to be aimed at the average. The students who need more time and repetition to master the material will still need a pull-out.

However, even if the schools adopted good curricula, many of the kids with LD's would still need 1:1 or small-group tutoring. Using a good program is an important first step,

Yes, effective instruction is an important first step. No one is saying that LD identification is solely because of bad instruction or curricula. Also you are bringing up a different issue--the heterogeneous class. Yes, even with good programs, mixing abilities is not a good idea. And even when there is ability grouping, there will be students who truly are LD. It would be nice to be treating truly LD students rather than casualty cases of bad instruction.

"...it doesn't get around the fact that in a heterogeneous class, the pace and challenge level is going to be aimed at the average."

It's worse than that. They can't aim at the average, or something close to half of the kids would fall behind. California requires that all kids be tested for the GATE program. My kids' public school found that about 60% of the 4th graders were "gifted", by the test standards. We were told that that was the good news; the bad news was that we didn't have any funds for a GATE program, so we couldn't do anything for those kids.

I said that, since the majority of kids were gifted, they could forget about GATE funds and just use the gifted curriculum as the standard curriculum, supplementing the minority who weren't gifted using the funds we DID have for kids who couldn't keep up.

They thought that was a ridiculous suggestion. If we did that, I was told, we would have too many kids who can't keep up. "We can't handle very many." Apparently, at least in our school, they use a curriculum designed so that only one or two kids (out of 32 or so) will need help keeping up.

It depends on definitions of "keeping up," of course, but that sounds to me as though they don't target the "average kid," they target the 5-10 percentile, so 1) no child gets left behind and, internationally, 2) almost the whole class is kept behind.

>>It depends on definitions of "keeping up," of course, but that sounds to me as though they don't target the "average kid," they target the 5-10 percentile, so 1) no child gets left behind and, internationally, 2) almost the whole class is kept behind.

Agree. Here they will put the top 5-10 in the same elementary classroom with the bottom 5-10, in order to keep the parents of the lower achievers from accusing them of (insert your choice)ism or of giving the high acheivers the best teachers. With nclb, the ncga curriculum came in with its pacing charts. Lower acheivers have pullouts daily..they get direct instruction in vocab, spelling, and other areas in order to 'catch up'. Reading instruction is now whole class...everyone at the same level no matter what the individual instructional levels are...the pacing and level is grade level, which is crazy because those that are behind are waaaay behind.

The old way, bluebirds/robins/whatever had the age group for the grade level strung out over 1.5 instructional years. Kids could catch up to grade level over a few summers.

Also, does anyone really think that kids don't know where they are on the academic spectrum, no matter how they are grouped? No one in my class/grade (same thing) had had kindergarten, and the names of the reading groups were non-hierarchical (birds,mammals, fish)and changed regularly, but we all knew which was the top, middle and bottom - within the first week. It was the same for my kids, in an ES with multiple classes at each grade level; everyone knew that Mrs. R had the top math group etc. Enough of the smoke and mirrors, already.

"everyone knew that Mrs. R had the top math group etc. Enough of the smoke and mirrors, already."

That is absolutely true: kids know. And they know that you are pretending to keep it secret. In doing so, you are sending the message that being in the slower group is shameful. So of course, you then have to reduce the number of kids you are shaming. I guess it's OK to shame 2 or 3 out of 32 but more than that and it's time to slow down. And the ones you are boring literally to tears? Not our problem...

"everyone knew that Mrs. R had the top math group etc. Enough of the smoke and mirrors, already."

That is absolutely true: kids know. And they know that you are pretending to keep it secret. In doing so, you are sending the message that being in the slower group is shameful. So of course, you then have to reduce the number of kids you are shaming. I guess it's OK to shame 2 or 3 out of 32 but more than that and it's time to slow down. And the ones you are boring literally to tears? Not our problem...

Regarding lgm's comment about combining the top and bottom of a grade in one class so the top kids wouldn't get the best teachers, I have two thoughts. First,deliberately combining these two groups is a new low, one of the very worst ideas I've ever heard, from a pedagogical standpoint. Second, the best teachers for the top group may not be the best teachers for those strugging. Particularly at MS-HS levels, some teachers excel with high achievers who can master the material at speed, with little repetition, easily combine steps, see connections and make intuitive leaps. Those teachers are not always successful with kids needing lots of repeated/different explanations,very explicit identification of steps and lots of patience.